This Summer on FRONTLINE

From the U.S.-Mexico border to Charlottesville to the streets of Tehran, our reporters and documentary filmmakers have been traveling both the country and the world to go inside key stories that are shaping our times. 

You’ll see the results very soon: Beginning on Tuesday, July 24, we’ll bring you four new documentaries in a row.  

The first of those films is UN Sex Abuse Scandal, reported by correspondent Ramita Navai, who recently earned a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for her work out of Iraq for us. This time, she travels to the Central African Republic and the Democratic Republic of Congo, and tracks down survivors who were as young as 11 when they say they were raped or sexually exploited by UN peacekeepers who were supposed to protect them. 

The following week, on July 31, in Separated: Children at the Border, producers Marcela Gaviria and Martin Smith tell the inside story of what happened to immigrant children separated from their parents at the border. Gaviria has been investigating the treatment of minors at the border for more than a year. With on-the-ground reporting both at the border and in Central America, she and Smith explore the impact of the Trump administration’s “zero tolerance” policy — and how both Trump and Obama dealt with minors at the border. 

Then, on Tuesday, August 7, just before the one-year anniversary of the deadly Charlottesville rally, we’ll air a major new film called Documenting Hate: Charlottesville. In collaboration with ProPublica, this investigation with correspondent A.C. Thompson exposes the white supremacists and neo-Nazis involved in the Charlottesville rally, and shows how some of those behind the racist violence went unpunished and continued to operate around the country. Our reporting with ProPublica revealed that a neo-Nazi active duty Marine, Vasillios Pistolis, participated in the Charlottesville violence, and it has already had impact. Pistolis was court-martialed, and citing our reporting, Rep. Keith Ellison (D-MN) wrote to U.S. Secretary of Defense James Mattis asking him to investigate “white supremacist activity in the military and explain what steps are taken to screen recruits for extremist ties.” And just last week, we reported that another participant in the Charlottesville violence, Michael Miselis, works for a prominent defense contractor and has a U.S. government security clearance. After our story was published, the company, Northrop Grumman, said that it would take “immediate action to look into the very serious issues raised by these reports” — and the day after our report, a company spokesman told FRONTLINE and ProPublica that Miselis “is no longer an employee.”

And finally, on Monday, August 13 and Tuesday, August 14, we’ll present Our Man in Tehran – a revealing miniseries on life inside Iran, from New York Times correspondent Thomas Erdbrink. In this two-night documentary special, Erdbrink shares a rare journey into a private Iran often at odds with its conservative clerics and leaders. The series offers surprising encounters inside the closed society of Iran, as Erdbrink gets Iranians to reveal the intricacies of their private worlds and the challenges of living under theocratic leaders.

At FRONTLINE, we are committed to bringing you serious journalism for serious times — no matter the season. Thank you for watching, and for your support. 

– Raney Aronson-Rath FRONTLINE Executive Producer